


Mortal Errors

by kyatt



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Alternate Universe - Blade Runner Fusion, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Auguste (Captive Prince) Lives, Body Worship, Damen won't shut up about how pretty Laurent is, Hook-Up, M/M, One Night Stands, Possessive Damen, Seduction, Sexual Tension, as usual
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:27:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28372377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyatt/pseuds/kyatt
Summary: Damen had come to the night club expecting a lead, but instead met a beautiful blond there. He forgot that sometimes, beautiful things could be dangerous.
Relationships: Auguste & Laurent (Captive Prince), Damen/Laurent (Captive Prince)
Comments: 20
Kudos: 83





	Mortal Errors

**Author's Note:**

> This is only loosely based on the Blade Runner universe and can be treated as a generic sci-fi AU. If you’re not familiar with Blade Runner, you only need to know that:  
> Replicants = Bioengineered androids that look exactly like humans, but sometimes certain qualities can be enhanced to serve different purposes.  
> Blade runners = Bounty hunters whose job is to track down and kill (retire) rogue replicants. Technically belong to the police department. 
> 
> Give this a chance please? :*

By 9pm, Damen was positive he got stood up by his informer who was supposed to rendezvous with him in this night club an hour ago. It was pouring outside, and he was overworked and exhausted, stuck in this raucous and filthy place without a lead or an umbrella.

If he would be completely honest with himself, like he usually was, he would acknowledge that there was another reason for still sitting here other than reluctance to get soaked in the rain on the way back.

The blond man sitting across from him at the large oval-shaped bar had just politely refused the second drink a bulky male stranger was trying to buy him. From afar he could see that the blond wore a high-neck black top that was possibly an effort to keep a low profile, but only served to highlight the slim lines of his shoulders and chest even more. Damen could see why the other man was willing to try so hard. The moment Damen had noticed him, he had been sure he’d been looking at the prettiest face in the entire club tonight.

The big guy was persistent, shameless enough to linger around, still trying to chat up his target. Damen unselfconsciously began studying the blond man’s demeanor, the way he eluded the other person’s gaze and carefully positioned his body. All of Damen’s detective instincts were telling him that the blond was utterly annoyed by the other man’s presence, but would prefer to keep things civil. He was waiting for a specific person in that spot, and therefore could not easily retreat to a less noticeable corner to escape all the attention he was attracting. You would have to be very unobservant not to notice that several other pairs of eyes nearby were preying on him likewise, impatiently waiting for the next chance.

Damen made himself look away, drank some of his beer, and reminded himself of his purpose of coming here.

“Sorry, I’m late,” Damen heard himself say casually as he appeared on the vacant side of the blond man. Inwardly, he cursed himself for giving in to his own curiosity.

 _And vanity._ This had always been his favorite part on a night out.

Getting the beautiful, but difficult ones, while others watch.

“Hey,” the blond looked up, and quietly eyed him once before he continued, “I was beginning to worry that you might have been blown away by the thunderstorm.”

“Looks like you took the underground streets,” he raised a hand to feel Damen’s curls, which were dry. If he was surprised by Damen’s sudden approach, he didn’t let his reactions give away any of it.

Up close, Damen saw that he wore a small dangling earring in a starburst shape, the gold just a shade deeper than his hair. This place had an awful diffused pale purple lighting that made almost everyone at least a bit sickly, and he looked absolutely gorgeous.

He turned his face to the other side to send off the big guy with a final “Excuse us”, then turned back to stare at Damen. The corners of his mouth lifted to form a conspiratorial smile that disappeared too quickly, but at least he didn’t look like he wanted Damen to be gone immediately.

“That was smooth,” he waited until the man was out of earshot to say, “I’m Laurent.”

“Damen,” Damen replied as he felt the deep blue gaze from those almond-shaped eyes do funny things to his stomach. Something deep inside him whispered danger. He promptly dismissed the alert, and went on, “Why didn’t you just tell him to get lost?”

“I didn’t want to start anything. I’m waiting for somebody,” said Laurent, then after a brief pause, “—was waiting.”

Laurent shrugged and gave a wry smile. Damen was pleased with this answer because it both validated his earlier theory and broadened the range of possible things that could happen tonight.

“That makes two of us,” and so he advanced.

“Let me guess,” said Laurent, humming as he sucked on the olive of his martini, then licked the drops of alcohol trickling down his fingers, “it’s a woman.”

“Someone who was supposed to bring me good news tonight.”

“That’s frustrating. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. Apparently I’ve found something better to do here,” said Damen. He started to wave the bartender over to buy both of them drinks as a man in a terrible, flashy silver jacket got close to Laurent from behind. It was hard to tell at that moment whether he was too drunk to see Damen or simply audacious—it could be both, because he was bold enough to place his hand on the side of Laurent’s waist and was beginning to lean in to mumble some drunken nonsense in his ear.

It was happening fast, but Damen’s reaction was faster. He slapped off the stranger’s hand and as the man tardily became aware of the situation and glowered at him, warned with a low but clear “No”. The man took two seconds to evaluate the physical difference between himself and Damen, and wandered off grudgingly.

Laurent considered him briefly and let out a poorly stifled snicker.

“What,” Damen snapped, not entirely in an unamused fashion. He was aware that his hand had replaced the other man’s to linger around the smalls of Laurent’s back, and decided to keep it there.

“When I first saw you over there earlier, I thought there’s no way you’d be into men,” Laurent said with a slightly bashful expression, lowering his gaze on the bar table. Damen felt a surge of satisfaction upon hearing his honest confession. He was ready to respond with something nice and clever until Laurent looked up again and finished, “or you should at least prefer real boys.”

Laurent kept his meek, picture-perfect smile as he waited for the meaning of his words to sink in.

“You’re a replicant,” attempted Damen, a part of him still reluctantly trying to make sense of the now-conspicuous truth.

“And you, a blade runner,” Laurent enunciated each syllable as he held Damen’s gaze unwaveringly. In that instant, Damen could see from an angle a flash of a curious reflection at the center of his blue eyes. A sharp, contrasting color. Of warning, and of blood. Laurent blinked once, and it was gone.

“How—” Damen began, and was immediately interrupted by the huge noise of a brawl that had just broken out behind them at one of the VIP tables.

“Just before you came over, I was telling big guy that the people I knew at that table had some extra pills they’d gotten as samples from a supplier, and that they were happy to share,” said Laurent matter-of-factly as he got up from the bar stool and began putting on his black leather jacket.

Damen turned to look, and saw that the first man he had warded off from Laurent was now deep in a fist fight with two of the men in black suits from that table.

“You don’t know any of those guys,” said Damen, a bit awestruck by now.

“No,” answered Laurent. He popped one last piece of peanut in his mouth and started for the exit. “We should go now.”

Thirty minutes later, they were both sitting in the couch in Damen’s living room, sipping whisky from heavy-bottomed glasses with a rain-drenched towel draped around the neck.

“You’ve been laughing for the past fifteen minutes. Get over it,” Damen said sourly when he saw that Laurent was still smirking around the rim of his glass.

Their escape had not been completely free of obstacles. They had intended to sneak out through the less noticeable side exit of the club, until they had realized there’d been simply no way not to get noticed when you were moving with someone of Damen’s stature. With the brawling in the VIP area escalating in the background, the bouncers had become more vigilant with people getting in and out of the place.

It’d appeared that Laurent had gotten through the control at the exit without a hint of effort but just by being himself—a seemingly harmless young man with the face of an angel—while Damen was inevitably stopped, by not one, but two of the most intimidating-looking bouncers guarding the exit. They had padded him down scrupulously and proceeded to ask questions to make sure he’d had nothing to do with the rows in the club. Perhaps more out of curiosity than necessity, before they had let him go, one of them had asked what he’d been doing for a living.

“ _‘Same as you. I work at a club uptown.’_ ” Laurent repeated his response in a way that was more a derisive reenactment than an honest impression, then added for accuracy, “ _‘a small one.’_ ”

Damen rolled his eyes in disapproval and sought to detach himself from this conversation by refilling his glass with the bronze-colored liquid.

“And now, to answer the question you’ve been waiting to ask,” said Laurent, gradually dropping the amusement in his tone and replacing it with his default placid composure, “I knew you’re a blade runner because I know someone who wears a device like that too.”

He pointed at the black wristband on Damen’s left wrist.

It was a location tracker that would have been concealed more carefully with clothing when he was on an active assignment. Anybody who shared his job title would get one on the first day they reported for duty so that their superiors could track their locations real-time, to make rescue or body retrieval easier. Unsurprisingly, hunting down rogue androids meant putting yourself on a knife edge too, quite literally.

“You’ve chosen a tough job,” Laurent continued when Damen said nothing. “Someone’s got to do it, I guess.”

He sounded like he was talking about the work of a butcher or an undertaker, which was not that far from the truth.

Despite their dramatic encounter with each other, Laurent didn’t seem like he had anything against Damen’s kind. In fact, he had just mentioned that he personally knew another blade runner. He must be a registered new model if he was able to roam the city freely, perhaps the vocational type, even. It was not uncommon to see new generation replicants that were indifferent to the nature of a blade runner’s job. After all, they only retired the obsolete rogue models who posed potential threats to society, and most of these fugitive replicants lived in underground communities that were completely segregated from the legal models.

“I didn’t,” said Damen, at last.

Laurent gave an inquisitive glance.

“I didn’t choose it.”

And that was all he was willing to say about why he had fallen to the current point of his career. Realizing he had brought the conversation to a cul-de-sac, he tried for a different direction of the topic, “it’s neither pleasant nor glorious, indeed. But I try my best to make it quick, at least.”

“Quick and painless. They won’t even feel a thing,” Laurent mused. There was a subtle edge in his voice that disturbed the relative ease of Damen.

“We use a special type of taser,” said Damen, because he felt that the word “gun” might just sound a little too strong. “It takes less than a second.” _If you aimed at the right place, and if your target didn’t struggle._

“Has it ever crossed your mind that,” said Laurent, leaning back into his corner of the couch so that he could look right into Damen’s eyes, “you could be one of us, you just didn’t know all along?”

“They run tests on us every day, at work,” answered Damen, finding the question a bit absurd. “I know what I am. I know what I’m doing.”

“Oh, so do we,” Laurent huffed, staring at the remaining content in his glass as he whirled it. Damen didn’t miss his choice of pronoun and that familiar edge in his voice that came and went.

“For better or worse, your job is certainly much more exciting than mine,” Laurent began again as he adjusted his position, crossing his legs. For two seconds Damen’s attention was stuck on the smooth fair skin showing through the ripped parts of his grey jeans so he didn’t registered that Laurent had shifted closer in his direction. “I work in a biotech lab.”

“As a technician,” he then added, probably for fear of confusion.

The lack of immediate response betrayed Damen as much as his briefly widened eyes did.

“I… had different assumptions about your occupation,” admitted Damen.

“You thought I was a pleasure model,” said Laurent, surprisingly seeming more amused than offended by Damen’s presumption. His eyes were the color of fine blue topaz in this lighting, his dampened hair ready to drip liquid gold.

“You’re way too attractive to be anything else,” Damen tried his best to make it sound like a compliment but not derogation, as it was supposed to be.

Laurent hummed as if plotting something in his head. He lowered his gaze to look at his own hands, which long and delicate fingers he was now slowly flexing. When he blinked, his dense lashes brushed against the highest points of his cheekbones, flapping and trembling like wings of birds.

“They say I’m a customized model,” he lifted his wrists slightly to examine the inner side of them, like they were some novel objects instead of parts of his own body. Blue veins ran under the finest skin there—replicants were bioengineered to look exactly the same as humans, but it still shocked Damen sometimes how much they resembled the real thing.

“Who knows where they had gathered the parts to build me?” said Laurent, it came out like a question that was not demanding an answer.

“Where, I don’t know. I just know the person who commissioned them to make you must be filthy rich.”

To that, Laurent didn’t answer. He picked up his glass from the coffee table, tilted his head back and downed all the alcohol in it.

“I might just have too much to drink,” he said, leaning his upper body forward to put the glass back on the table, suddenly looking like he might topple over. The towel fell from Laurent’s shoulders. Damen grabbed on his arms in time and pulled him back in place.

“I thought alcohol didn’t affect you,” Damen said as he still kept both hands wrapped around Laurent’s arms from behind, but they went from just supporting them to a soothing, sweeping motion against the now half-dried black fabric. He felt the lean muscles underneath tense and relax in his palms.

“The effect, like most other things in us, is also customizable,” Laurent pointed out as he briefly luxuriated in Damen’s massaging hands like he was genuinely enjoying it. Then, in their awkward position of Damen half-embracing Laurent from behind, he tilted his head to one side so that he could turn his face to look at Damen, “I’m only doing this so that you could take me to bed.”

Damen’s hands stopped abruptly. But then Laurent began to snuggle up to Damen’s chest, fitting himself perfectly in the space there, looking up at him with his marble glass eyes with intent.

Damen knew his own weakness, knew that once he was caught in a situation like this he would have no means to back away from it if he ever found out it was a trap, _as it had happened once in the past_.

“We don’t have to,” he tried to resist, and it sounded too much like pleading.

“I think we both know why I’m here,” Laurent cooed as he gently pressed the side of his face onto Damen’s shoulder, then, in a voice that was not completely free of self-disdain, “ _a stray android, clinging to the arms of its executioner._ ”

The sudden realization of how this was a much more precarious situation for Laurent than for himself, coupled with the intense urge to feel the fine strands of gold now rubbing on his sweater, was all it took to dismantle Damen’s feeble defense.

“Only if you want,” Damen yielded, lifting one hand to smooth the soft hair around Laurent’s face.

“To let you take me apart and examine me everywhere?”

There was a change in the quality of Laurent’s voice that Damen couldn’t exactly fathom. He looked down, and saw that the smile on Laurent’s face was devious, saccharine and sad, at once.

Simulated fire crackling from the atmosphere panel in Damen’s bedroom masked the distant sounds of incessant rain and thunder outside. The advanced thermostatic system kept his living unit at an optimal temperature at all times, but it was Laurent’s human-like body heat that was keeping him warm tonight.

Damen slid his hands over Laurent’s still-clothed thighs, which were now aptly straddling his own atop his queen size bed, delighting in the soft sounds Laurent made between deep kisses as his thumbs drew small circles on his inner thighs. Laurent smelled like rain mixed with expensive perfume, and tasted like honeyed wine. It kept Damen wanting more, how Laurent’s kisses were alternately hesitant and unrelenting, a liquor that was sweet on the tongue but burned the back of his throat.

“Have you ever,” Laurent managed, in a charmingly breathy voice, as they broke off once.

“With a replicant?” Damen took over seamlessly, Laurent’s question communicated in means other than words somehow. “Not knowingly.”

Flashbacks filled his mind momentarily against his will, as the ambiguity of his answer hung in the air. He mentally shook himself out of it. Turning back at Laurent’s pale hair and blue eyes, he suddenly saw the irony in it, plain as day. Then, when Laurent didn’t push further but accepted his partial truth with only a raised brow and curious eyes, he corrected himself. Laurent possessed beauty that was comparable to that of _hers_ , but they were evidently two entirely different things.

“And you, have you ever?” Damen whispered as he leaned back in to kiss the spot behind Laurent’s ear, nuzzling the silky golden hair there. His hands had since taken on an exploration of Laurent’s body, albeit still hindered by a layer of fabric, around his taut waistline, up his back, down the flanks and then up again. He surveyed Laurent’s reactions to his different touch, logged them, and imagined doing it all over again. Later, on bare skin.

“He thinks he’s the first,” said Laurent as he visibly fought back the gasps elicited by Damen’s nibbling along the underside of his jaw. The sentence uttered with summoned scorn, complemented with the reddening at the tips of his ears and the glint in his dark eyes, had a heady effect on Damen. He could feel himself rousing—in more ways than one—but more than anything his body ached with a deep, growling desire uncaged.

“He just thinks,” Damen cooed, soft and low, “that he’s very, very lucky.”

He dragged a trail of kisses across Laurent’s left cheek. He paused when he reached the corner of his lips, waited for the first sign of hesitation from Laurent, then took over his mouth as his hand found its way to Laurent’s nape to pull him in. This time, he kissed him like he hoped to deliver all the praises that would sound excessive in words, in the form of long, hot and deep exploitation of Laurent’s mouth.

When he finally pulled away, it was to check if he could find a hint of annoyance on Laurent’s face at the interruption. Convinced that he did, he tugged at the hem of the top Laurent was wearing to signify that the break would only be brief but was necessary. He pecked on his cheek in compensation, and asked softly, “Can I see more?”

He would have spent more time to consider the momentary disbelief on Laurent’s face upon hearing that, if he hadn’t been so stunned by what he saw when Laurent swiftly lost his top.

It was at that particular moment that Damen had the strange epiphany that Laurent, despite everything, was indeed man-made. _If God existed, he did not make this._ He thought as his eyes savored the fine alabaster skin now fully on display, a stark contrast to the dark veil that had covered it and was now discarded on the floor. He tried to recall art terminology he had heard of: golden ratio, perfect balance; but none of these could even begin to describe the way lines were placed on Laurent’s body. The hollows and protrusions around the shoulders and collarbones were shaped like grips of luxurious handcrafted bows, elegant to look at and perfect to touch. When he breathed, the lines that cut in all the right places over his chest and abs deepened and faded. _God made men the way he liked them to be, and men did the same with things._ Damen continued to muse as his admiration went on. _God did not make this. A man did. This was made according to men’s liking, not God’s._

“I bet it turns you on to know you could do virtually anything you want to a body like this without any real consequences,” said Laurent, in a tone that could be either seductive or provocative, or both. There was a cruel degree of truth to what he just said. Yes, there were laws which prohibit abuse of replicants, but according to them, anything that could be fixed with money and some tweaking of programs was never considered to be out of line.

“When I see a body like yours,” Damen began to disagree. _The prettiest, finest thing I’ve ever seen in my life_ , he added only mentally. “I only want to do everything _you_ want.”

At that, Laurent again gave a subtle scowl with distrust, but was quick to turn his face away as Damen finally smoothed his hands on his bare waist, where the skin was soft as cream. Damen was not sure why Laurent should get offended by his saying a thing like this or asking for permission, but he was currently too fascinated by the way Laurent was responding to his hands gliding all over his body to be truly concerned.

“It suits you,” Damen praised as he passed an index finger over the navel piercing on Laurent. It was small and simple, adorned with a tiny blue gem. “Are there more?”

“You’re insatiable, you know?” The look Laurent gave him as he said this was supposed to be chastising, but only served to send a thumping pulse down Damen’s lower abdomen.

“I once heard,” Damen said, as his hands went up to Laurent’s chest to roll his nipples between his fingers. They were small and hard like summer berries; Damen’s mouth thirsted for a taste of them. Laurent’s body gave a jerk that was frankly overreaction to such a minor stimulation, which he tried to conceal with a quick kiss on Damen’s lips as Damen leaned closer. He finished his sentence against Laurent’s lips, “That certain parts of the pleasure models’ bodies were _specifically_ designed.”

He adjusted his tone so that it fit the topic he was discussing. His tone was lewd. One of his hands left Laurent’s front and traveled to his back to cup his buttock, still clad in jeans but soft and full all the same, as if he feared he had not made his meaning clear. Damen was aware he was taking liberties both with his words and his body, but he couldn’t wait any longer to show Laurent what he wanted Laurent to see and feel, _what no one else could give him_. He wanted, to see his sophisticatedly engineered mind to be able to process nothing else, and to hear his wonderful mouth sigh only his name.

A wicked smile appeared on Laurent’s innocent face, informing Damen in his own unique way that his invitation to this night-long venture had been accepted. He rolled his hips once, twice against the burning core of Damen, which was hard as rock, then began to walk his palms onto Damen’s chest to push him down onto the bed. Damen’s head landed on the pillows as he heard Laurent’s clever mouth say one last thing,

“I guess there’s only one way to find out.”

Laurent got back to his neighborhood by his motorbike when the sky was a ghostly white. “Neighborhood” was a nice way to put it, while it really was just the gutter where everything that fell through the brighter parts of the city gathered. Drizzle wetted his outfit which hadn’t been fully dry since he had left that night club last night. He took off his helmet and habitually shook his head twice once he reached close enough to the building. A homeless man lay at the open entrance of the building, next to which black letters “SKINJOB RIGHTS” were sprayed on the cement wall. There was not enough information to tell whether the man was just asleep or dead.

Over the past two years, Laurent realized that there were a lot of similarities between the life here and playing a new game. There were a lot of rules to learn. Many things that were forbidden in other parts of the city were allowed here, such as off limits drugs, contract killing, trafficking and prostitution involving underaged replicants; and vice versa, like how you should never fly a hovercar around here although they were everywhere in other areas, because they would attract too much attention from the cops. Then, like in games, there were things you could practice to get better at. Like getting yourself out of trouble, or looking for it intentionally then getting out of it. Good thing Laurent was a fast learner, because the biggest difference between his life now and a game was that if he slipped up, what awaited him could be worse than death.

Laurent opened the door to his unit and was relieved to see no one in the living room. He proceeded to his own room with footfalls as light as a cat.

As the familiar smell of the air of his own space filled him, he realized suddenly he needed a moment to collect himself. He lay down on his bed and started breathing deeply in a rhythm, imagining the fatigue from the escapade at the club fading with each exhalation. To his frustration, the more he tried, the more he felt a different kind of soreness take shape instead. Soreness resulted from other uses of his body last night. He allowed himself to stay like this for two minutes.

The monitor on his desk, switched on automatically when he entered the room, was showing widgets of information such as sightings of police in the area and job requests from the black market repair shop Laurent worked at. At the top left corner was a gallery displaying photos, taken from times when wanting to remember specific moments of his life was still a normal thing to Laurent.

On the screen was a photo of Laurent in polo uniform, posing next to a stocky white pony. He had been eleven years old. That same year, he had been given the truth about what being a son to Aleron and Hennike Arles of the Arles Corporation had really meant. He learnt that his resemblance to his mother was not a result of the wonder of inheritance, only state-of-the-art engineering. He also learnt that human boys didn’t receive a new body and have their memory and operating system transferred to it each year. It was shocking to him, because between homeschooling and only playing with a carefully selected group of girls and boys of his own kind growing up, he had never once doubted his realness.

For countless times, they reassured Laurent that not a thing in his life was ever going to change due to his nature, that the very reason he had been created was because there had been love and wealth with no place to go. Yet, in the end, what really brought him peace was knowing that Auguste, his golden shining star of an elder brother, was also a replicant. At eleven, Laurent had thought, how could that possibly be bad, if it meant being just like Auguste?

Another photo popped up. In the picture, Laurent’s ski goggles were pushed up to show his cold-pinked cheeks; Auguste was next to him, laughing and wearing a beanie covered in chunks of snow which had been Laurent’s doing. Laurent looked at himself on the screen—he was smiling just like an ordinary teenager having the time of his life—and felt an urge to look away.

Everything had changed after that trip. They had come home to the news of their parents’ fatal private jet accident, and the subsequent board decision for their uncle to take over the Arles Corporation. Several months later, the company had announced a list of older replicant model numbers manufactured by the Corp that had been found to be seriously fault-prone, together with Auguste’s removal from the board. Auguste had been one of the original models pioneered by the Corp.

Laurent lifted both hands to cover his eyes with his palms. He remembered that night like yesterday. Auguste had appeared in the doorway of Laurent’s room, still in his business suit and carrying a duffel bag. He’d wrapped his arms tightly around Laurent’s shoulders and kissed the top of his head wordlessly. He had only come to say goodbye, but Laurent had been taught to make his own decisions his whole life. A life without Auguste or a lifetime of side-stepping, dodging and running away. It had been the easiest decision he had ever had to make.

Hot water from the shower warmed Laurent’s body, washing away the rain that had soaked every inch of him last night.

The only tricky part had been building the connections he’d needed to get the name of the blade runner assigned to hunt his brother. That had taken time, money and effort. Everything after that had been easy.

Damianos had been easy.

Most of the information Laurent had successfully obtained about Damianos turned out to be accurate. The excessively powerful physique. The imprudent, egotistic demeanor. The lack of discretion and self-preservation. The strong tendency to give in to physical attraction—it was almost ludicrous, how simple it had been to seduce this man. Perhaps even the unverified rumors he had come across about Damianos were indeed true. How he had slumped from deputy chief to a bottom-ranked, scavenging blade runner, all just for covering up some data breach committed by the mistress of his chief of police half-brother. It sounded like cheap soap TV, but after meeting Damianos in person, Laurent’s doubt about the authenticity of this story had now shrunk significantly.

The only discrepancy Laurent hadn’t expected was how Damianos had behaved in bed. Laurent examined the marks scattered all over his body in the mirror as he toweled himself down. They looked like crimson scars of various sizes, burned there by Damianos’ mouth. Laurent’s mind wandered off as he discovered more and more of them, in places he didn’t remember had been touched.

 _Tell me how you like it._ Damianos had whispered near his face, as his palms had slid down Laurent’s thighs, spreading them. _Rough._ Eyes closed, Laurent had responded, because that way it would be over sooner and more tolerable than _this_. _Then you don’t know what you like._ Damianos had said with an infuriating smile in his voice before he had begun to put Laurent through rounds of slow, torturous, dragged-out pleasure.

It had been nothing like Laurent had rehearsed mentally with the theoretical knowledge he’d possessed, especially with Damianos. He recalled the sounds he had made when Damianos had pushed him to the edge, repeatedly, and felt heat creep up his cheeks.

None of that mattered anymore. He demanded himself to shut last night out of his mind as he pulled on a sweatshirt he’d borrowed from Auguste and returned to his room. This had been planned to be a one-off, and his plan had worked out.

He keyed in the pin to the lock on his drawer and picked up the mobile device stowed in there. A few taps and swipes and a map of the city was pulled up on the screen. There used to be only one moving dot on it, but now there were two, thanks to the codes Laurent had loaded onto Damianos’ tracker wristband while he had gone in the shower after they’d been done. Laurent had been extremely lucky he hadn’t even had to consider using any of his backup plans.

He watched the dot that was Damianos hovering around the downtown police station as his other hand reached deeper into the corner of his drawer. He knew it was there, but he needed to feel it. His fingers slipped along the cold metallic barrel, then to the curve of the back of the grip. He lifted it slightly, sensing the grounded weight and the finality it carried.

Withdrawing his hand, he took one last look at the screen and saw the other dot approaching his own current location. He put the device back, shut the drawer and heard the lock click.

Outside, there was the sound of the main door opening.

“Laurent, I’m home,” said his brother, coming home from a night of strenuous, exploitative labor, the only type of work he was able to sustain without proper documentation.

His brother should not have to live like this, but even living itself was quickly becoming a thing he had to fight for. Fury was a hissing snake perched in Laurent’s artificial heart.

His plan was simple, and only one more step remained: One day, the dot on the map that was Damianos would finally get too close to the one that was Auguste, and that would be the day when Laurent would pull the trigger on Damianos.

There was nothing Laurent would not do to save Auguste’s life. And he knew Auguste felt the same way for him, too.

So he ran his fingers through his damp hair once, pretending he had just freshened himself up with a morning shower after a good, undisturbed night’s sleep, and opened his bedroom’s door.

“Morning, Auguste.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is a completely self-indulgent fic and I enjoyed writing every word of it so that was noice. That being said, writing in a second language will never not be nerve-wracking and there were times I simply had no idea what I was doing. Please pretend you don’t see bad grammar and weird phrases because I know they must exist. 
> 
> I apologize if Damen sounds like a complete douchebag at times. It’s entirely intentional. I tried to downplay the potential Auguste/Laurent in this but no matter what I did it’s just kind of there LOL they’re also not REAL brothers when you think of it so
> 
> If you like this could you please drop a comment to let me know what you think about replicant Laurent?:D 
> 
> I’m on tumblr @akielonsummer


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